As mobile communications services have become widespread, people increasingly require data and voice communications in a variety of situations and locations. For instance, wireless e-mail messaging, web browsing, and voice telephony are becoming commonplace in retail businesses, restaurants, airports, offices, conference rooms, and even vehicles.
In addition to the rise of wireless communications, portable computing devices (such as laptop computers and personal digital assistants (PDAs)) are also frequently used in the aforementioned situations and locations where mobile communications are desired. In fact, such mobile communications often arise from information that is displayed by the portable computing devices in electronic documents. Examples of such information include names, telephone numbers, and e-mail addresses.
Typically, the initiation of communications based on this information requires manual entry of corresponding data. For instance, this manual entry may involve dialing a telephone number, typing an e-mail address, or accessing an entry in an electronic address book through multiple keystrokes on a communications device's keypad.
Accordingly, there is a need to provide efficient initiation of communications from information displayed by computing devices.
In certain situations, computing devices and communications devices are distinct from each other. However, such distinct devices may be able to communicate through wired or wireless connections. For example, wired connections may be provided through serial, parallel, or local area network connections, while wireless connections may be provided by Bluetooth or wireless local area networks (WLANs).
Presently, such connections are not utilized to streamline the initiation of communications.